You didn't happen to leave a floppy in the drive did you? I don't remember the exact wording but that sounds like the same message you get if the computer tries to boot from an NT/2000/XP formatted floppy.

My last two power supplies have been Enermax. My current one is a 420W Noisetaker EG425P-VE which has some pretty nice features. One I think is nice, after power off it runs the fans for two minutes or until the case temp is under 40'C. It has super stable voltages and dual +12V rails for cleaner output. I know it helped me get a higher stable overclock on my Athlon. There's also a separate dedicated power connector for video cards.

The Noisetaker and the Seasonic that Gordon has are the top two on Silent PC Review's recommended list. The Seasonic is quieter but the Noisetaker has more features and higher efficiency.

Dismemberment Plan (link to playable albums) - great indie punk/pop band. Goofy but smart lyrics backed by one of the tightest rhythm sections going. Best albums were "...Is Terrified" and "Emergency & I". Their last album, "Change" was a bit of a departure, still good but not as catchy. Lead singer Travis Morrison put out a solo record but it's really out there and off the wall lyrically. Hopefully his work will improve, at this point it just doesn't have the same spark.

Camper Van Beethoven - Bizarre mix of rock, ska and eastern european folk music with violin as a main instrument. One of their better known songs is "Take the Skinheads Bowling" but isn't really a good representation of their sound. Singer David Lowery went on to form the better known Cracker which I didn't care for much. BUT, I just saw that CVB has reformed and put out a new album so I guess they don't really count for this list anymore. It's been getting good reviews but I'm actually afraid to buy it for fear that they've drastically changed their sound.

I'd love to hear another Neutral Milk Hotel album but last I heard Jeff Magnum was off doing some "found sound" type stuff. Maybe someday....

Yeah, the keyboard was originally designed for Macs so they did some funny stuff to make the layout work for PC. They put them as the top two rows of the numberpad area. '/' and '*' are moved to the right of 'pg up' 'pg dn' instead of being above '8' and '9'. Numlock and Scroll Lock are combined on one key to the right of F12 and above backspace. Pause and Print Screen are on '-' and '/' respectively on the number pad, you hit right-shift + key to activate them.

The other odd move is that they split up the '+' and '-' keys. '+ =' is on the left side of the keyboard between '~' and '1', '- _' is still on the right by Backspace. The reason is to keep a balanced layout, the alternative would have been to make Backspace a small key instead of being double-size like it is now. It's the only thing can be really bothersome but it's hardly an issue, you get used to it.

I have a Datadesk Smartboard. It's a true ergonomic keyboard that aligns the keys for each hand, not one that just splits the keys but still keeps the tilted layout. The plus side for a gamer is that ASDF are aligned. Downside is that some of the lesser used keys are in oddball positions and it uses mechanical keyswitches so it's a bit noisy. A highly regarded old IBM keyboard also uses the mechanical switches so some people actually consider that a plus, it's supposed to provide better feedback and feel.

Most of the kid voices in cartoons are done by women. And Cree Summer, she does so much voice work she's been in almost every cartoon for the last 10 years. Turn on Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon and you won't be able to go two hours without hearing her. If the character is a black girl it's almost guaranteed that Cree is doing the voice.

America's not any more or less religious than it ever was. It's just that the religious-right has a more vocal platform now, with Bush, a born-again Christian, as president.

Don't worry - we're the same people we've always been.

What the Republicans have been doing well is taking small but vocal groups (religious groups, gun lobby, etc.) and getting them under their umbrella. You get enough small groups together and you've got a majority. The only issue is that these groups think that the entire majority shares their view which is not always the case. They only agree to support the others views as a way to hold that majority.

History lesson - most of our presidents have at least claimed to be "born-again Christians". Bush is not an anomaly.

And Apollo - is there some reason a person can't be a Christian, yet "laid back easy going?" That describes the majority of my friends - who happen to be Christians as well. Try not to paint us with such a broad brush, kthxbai

Christian or "Born-Again" Christian? Wikipedia only lists two presidents that were Born-Agains, GW Bush and Jimmy Carter. Three if you want to count VP Dan Quayle.

I put the Born-Agains in a different category. The ones I know usually f*ked up their lives at some point (and usually those around them as well) with some addiction or other bad behavior, "found God" and put all the energy they devoted to said addiction or behavior into religion. Unfortunately religion becomes the new addiction, they either take it to extremes and try to convert everyone around them and generally harrass people as they try to prove themselves more devoted than anyone else. Or, they use it as a cover and continue their bad habits, if anyone confronts them they use the "God forgives me, why don't you?" line or some such.

I certainly believe there are Christians that are not so extreme. The difference is that they're generally those that were born into it and have lived it all their lives. They don't feel the need to prove themselves like the Born-Agains do.

If the majority is always right i guess we better throw all interacial couples in jail because the majority was against that (ironically it was the same group too!).

African-Americans and Hispanics are overwhelmingly against gay marriage. Next stereotype to be de-bunked, please. :roll:

Rhino

I am in an interracial marriage, I'm white, my wife is black. If you are suggesting that African-Americans and Hispanics don't discriminate against interracial couples then you would be sadly mistaken. We've had it from that group just as much if not more.

But that's the problem - if the mainline denominations are embracing this pluralistic theology, where all roads lead to heaven, what do they have to offer people? I can get that doctrine from everywhere else - I have no need for the church in that case. But as much as some try to force the notion that there is no right and wrong, the human heart has a need for answers - we need Truth (capital "T" intended). And that is why the smaller, evangelical (oooh, there's that scary word) non-denoms are booming - they offer answers. Not mealy-mouthed, muddled-middle theology.

"Just give us the answers, we don't want to have to figure this out for ourselves." If that's what evangelicals are all about then that truly is scary. If you don't take the time to consider what you're being told then how do you know it's really the Truth? "The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose." - Shakespeare.

The Merchant of Venice --Act I, Scene iii

Quote

Mark you this, Bassanio,The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.An evil soul producing holy witnessIs like a villain with a smiling cheek,A goodly apple rotten at the heart.Oh, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

I use AVast too. One thing though, it seems like it's good at blocking viruses but not so good at cleanup if you do get infected. I installed it on a friend's computer who had a severe virus problem. It did get rid of most but repairs generally didn't work, delete was the only option. There were some that it just couldn't get rid of at all. We tried AVG and it didn't seem to do much better. Norton did succeed at cleaning out the viruses though. If you already have a virus problem the free scanners might not be able to help you.

I heard this from various tech people in computer stores. xp is supposed to be much more cpu intensive, resource hog, etc.

"Much more" is an extreme eggageration. Yes, of course it is using more resources, it's doing a lot more. Is it enough to be noticable? Not at all. You could make the same comparison for 98 vs 2000 but you're not going to run 98 because of that are you? There are enough advantages to XP to make the switch worthwhile.

If you go the motherboard upgrade route the issues you're going to have are with chipset drivers. If you can get those cleaned out you could probably boot from your old hard drive. The one to watch out for in particular is the IDE drivers. Switch those to the generic Microsoft driver and you should be fine. Do this before you start to upgrade, while you're still on the old motherboard.

The 6x00 series is fine, in fact they perform very well with Half Life 2. There are tons of benchmarks on the harware sites for the Source Engine video stress test and Counterstrike:Source. That should give you a good idea of where HL2 will be at.

NVidia really blew it with the FX series, at least on DirectX. But they've more than made up for it on the new boards.

Don't do RAID, at least not for speed. For a single user environment it's just a marketing gimick. StorageReview has a good quote from one of their tests:

Finally, we come to the SR Gaming DriveMark, a weighted average of the drive accesses generated by five popular PC games. The flat slopes indicate that gaming uses benefit least from both RAID and command queuing. In fact, at 677 I/Os per second, a 4 drive Cheetah array operating off of the Acceleraid 170

lags a single Raptor running on the "dumbest" of SATA controllers by a margin of 9%.[/list]

If you haven't gotten the hint by now, we'll spell it out for you: there is no place, and no need for a RAID-0 array on a desktop computer. The real world performance increases are negligible at best and the reduction in reliability, thanks to a halving of the mean time between failure, makes RAID-0 far from worth it on the desktop.

Bottom line: RAID-0 arrays will win you just about any benchmark, but they'll deliver virtually nothing more than that for real world desktop performance. That's just the cold hard truth.

The Santa Cruz is old and outdated and the new Catalina and Riviera suck (review here). Right now the best affordable music card is the M-Audio Revolution and the best game card is the Audigy 2zs.

The Revolution has taken the music card spot from the Santa Cruz. It's advantage is better DACs and the ability to output 44Khz CD audio without upconverting to 48Khz like the Audigy and even the Santa Cruz do. Disadvantage is no hardware acceleration for games. It has Sensaura capabilities but Sensaura was bought by Creative so that's probably not going to see any further updating. :?

The Audigy 2 has the latest EAX and hardware acceleration but converts all audio to 48Khz before processing. From what other posters have said it also sounds like the Audigy's still have issues with VIA chipset motherboards.

Even though I have a Revolution I'd say unless CD audio quality is very important to you get the Audigy 2 unless you have a VIA chipset motherboard.

That last item is important, it got me from the 3250+ range to where I am now. The Athlon is a 2400+ (1.6Ghz) 35W Mobile processor. They're essentially normal socket A chips but they're qualified to run at high speeds at lower voltages than normal (1.35 vs 1.65). They're also fully unlocked so no need to modify the chip for overclocking.

Not that I really need to upgrade any more but I'm thinking about a new heatsink. I've got a Coolermaster HCC-001, one of the first to add heatpipes. Works well enough but it's a few years old and some of the newer heatsinks could bring the temps down 10-15C. I'm at 45-50C at idle and up to 68C at load (Prime95 running while playing Thief 3). That's high but the mobile Athlons are rated to a max temp of 100C, 20 degrees higher than the normal XPs. If I can dump some more heat I might be able to get to 3600+ or higher :twisted: . After that there's really nothing else to upgrade except maybe a DVD burner.

One more lost soul seeking asylum. Been lurking for a few days, waiting for official word. Since it doesn't look like GG will return and this has become a de facto new home I figured I better sign up. Thanks Knightshade for being so accomodating. So um, where's the fridge?